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FUZZY GALORE |
Encouraged by the success of the last scarf, I took a better look at some more
yarn I'd dyed with Sara Lamb. This one was painted in a more classic way,
skeined and laid out flat in a
circle and with the colors painted in stripes. I made an effort to pick colors
that would blend well together, it seems to me that often people who dye yarns
pick several colors and paint each stripe carefully trying not to overlap. I think
it makes more sense to pick several colors that come from the same primaries
(they'll probably look better together),
and to explicitly derive at least some desired colors from the overlap.
This was successful,
I painted wide blue stripes and thin gold ones, overlaid the middle of the blue with
magenta to make purples and one of the blue/yellow joins with navy to make indigos going to
chartreuse. I was happy with the fairly short repeats too, because
I don't like the streaks that can develop from long ones.
I made a straightforward Moebius scarf from Elizabeth Zimmermann because they're still my favorite kind of scarf, they don't distort at the end in use and I'm more likely to keep them because they don't fall off. I had kind of enough of the very speckled look after the last one, and I'm still feeling very excited about eyelash yarn and had a couple blue balls left that were just screaming to be matched with Sara's yarn. They look very well together, the eyelash very prominent, the wensleydale contributing little shots of color and flashes of luster. Yumm. This scarf I made very wide, so it ended up not very long, in fact since the wensleydale is so heavy it doesn't even double very well like a regular Moebius scarf. And it is rather heavy, looks very frothy but weighs in at 9oz (150g). So it's more like a Moebius ponchocito :-). But it looks really smashing, I love it...
Went to the Sonoma Spinners Picnic, had a great time, and
made a scarf from some stuff I dyed at Sara Lamb's workshop last spring. This was a bit odd,
and I did it against her advice, because it's not supposed to work. I had whomping
big 100g balls of fat yarn, worsted weight Wensleydale from Borocco.
It was getting late in the day, and I wanted very short and random
repeats, not something as structured as could be achieved from painting
a skein all laid out. So I took a few colors, a syringe, and proceeded
to inject the ball with colors in as random a way as I could manage.
The dye didn't disperse very far, possibly because the ball was relatively tight,
so I got my short repeats. And the results were fine, mostly because
I was very careful to hunt down any white spots and squirt them (mostly
with yellow toward the end). I snuck my fingers not just in the inside of
the ball, but also within the middle of the ball walls, if that makes any sense, so there was
very little thickness that I couldn't see.
When I looked at it, I saw why the 70s were like this - it's the result you get from working with a crude set of 3 primary colors. One could do better from starting with fewer colors... Or from something not so equally spread out on the color wheel. So, having a 70s yarn, I did what any 70s girl would do, and crocheted it. A simple V stitch pattern from a vintage Mon Tricot book. And it's just fine, one certainely can't complain about any discrepancy between the yarn and the pattern :-).
Finished the beach bag, and it's great! Interestingly, even though it's technically the same gauge as Kim's, it feels looser. Whatever. I can probably out-loose anyone at anything. And it's not a bad thing, read Elizabeth Zimmermann if you don't believe me and learn why cramped hands don't necessarily lead to tight knitting but do lead to crippling and make for much less enjoyment for that matter...
I did make it a backpack. The drawstring is not strong enough to hold a lot of weight, but then again neither is the bag :-). Don't take it to the library. And I thought of putting a little flap on top as in classic backpack design, but why? The purpose of a top flap is to keep the rain out of your bag, and believe me if it rained this bag would not be in the least water-resistant (although it probably wouldn't deform like cotton, which is something). I worked it out so when the bag is on, the top is as closed as it can get, which is good for toodling around the city. Oh, never mind, I wrote up the pattern for you.
Got distracted from the sweater by a bounty of Deco-Ribbon
and a pattern for a great
bag, originally knitted by Kim of Crystal Palace. Anyway, the original instructions
were for cabled cotton yarn, and I couldn't get down to that gauge even with much smaller
crochet, not that I really wanted to. So this naturally led to a lot of ripping...
There's always some amount of ripping when you're improvising colors anyway, in my
experience. But
in this case I finally went and made the mistake of asking Rose if she thought it
was too big, and she agreed heartily. Merde. So I ripped an -entire- ball, which hurts.
Grumbled through the whole thing and just tossed it on the floor, since I'd already figured
out the stuff is remarkable about not tangling. And blithely started up again
with oh, maybe 1/3 less stitches. That was good, and I guess it's more cheerful to rip
so as to have fewer stitches, it's encouraging that the second time will be faster,
although that's an attitude that often leads me to have initial objects that are
totally huge.
Anyway, about 20mn later Rose gets up to get something to drink and kind of insists, kind of heavily, that I look for the cat. I was in the middle of a row. But finally, slightly annoyed, I do look for the cat. And she was lying at my feet, right against the couch, with her entire head, no, her entire front half, covered in a froth of olive ribbon. I guess it wasn't suffocating her, she never made a peep while I was tossing it on her head, and didn't even move afterwards! We laughed till we cried. Juliette acted patient till she could resume her nap.
Then I crocheted some more. Am about half done. Thinking of making it a backpack rather than a shoulder bag, since that's rather what I prefer.
Amazing. Did an entire front in a single day on the fat handspun corriedale sweater.
In fact, that includes having to rip a few inches. I ran out of yarn, there was a loop
at the end so I brightly
concluded that I'd used both ends of the same ball to save carrying weight, and
(baaa) proceeded to do the same. Wrong! The new ball was significantly greyer
than the old. Riiip. Used 2 separate balls next, and interestingly enough the color blends
perfectly with the rest.
Now I could have predicted that, I knew this fleece wasn't uniform but in this case it wasn't big, only about 2 1/2lb clean weight, and I felt that I needed the whole thing to make a sweater. So, forewarned, I used every trick in the book to prevent streaks. I shouldn't have had this kind of glaring color line, but I did... And since my last sweater (the too-hot orange mohair) suffered from that same syndrome, in commercial dye lot this time, I didn't wish to repeat the experience. Guess bringing it up to 4 different plies is working though, so I won't complain, especially since it took something like 1/2 hr to reknit those 4 inches! Hurray for fat yarn!
The main thing is that I feel sheepish that I waited so long to work on this, if it was going to be so fast. Guess I'm still traumatized by all those 4-year sweaters on size 2 needles, I only approach sweaters with the most profound of qualms. It's obvious that I don't have enough yarn to finish this as a sweater, it's going to be a 3/4 sleeve vest-like object at best. But if I'd just gotten off my ass and worked on it it'd have been finished years ago. Sigh. Much of my fiber time, no matter what the media, seems to be spent in a tizzy of indecision...
Worked on the dotty socks. They're coming right along, and I do like the effect of short Bohus-like bursts of purled colors on a smooth grey ground. Works up faster than my usual ribs too, I'm curious to see whether these will fit as well. Although I don't know what I'm talking about, the socks that Priscilla makes for me are always in stockinette and they certainely fit just fine and don't even fall down in use.
After the last fiasco around the heel, I'm giving up and doing the heel the regular way, with no attempt to start the slip stitch higher on the leg. Let's be realistic, none of my socks have worn out starting that high. Possibly due to the fact that I have sensitive Achilles tendons and loathe shoes high in the back, but in any case they just don't. So I should leave well enough alone.
Made a pair of mompe pants, basically Japanese peasant pants. Interesting cut with
a curved panel on front of legs, which ought to allow for very comfortable squatting.
Paula has a pair of beautiful knit ones from her sister, where there's a single
curved seam in the middle of the front leg, but these are meant to be able to have a
contrasting or pieced panel. Thought I'd keep it simple for the first muslin try though.
I had a piece of nice crinkly rayon from a remnant sale at Britex last year,
and it seemed a good
pant weight while being drapy enough not to get a potato sack effect in what are
supposed to be loose pants. At least they should be very comfortable for summer.
I used the Carol Saber Lane pattern, and used their guidelines for size, ie I didn't just
knee-jerk make the size I'd expect. Well... Let's just say I could take 6" (15cm)
off each leg and still have nice loose pants. I have to go up and down the
3 flights of stairs holding them up like they were some 19th century crinoline,
or I risk pitching head first down the stairs. It doesn't help that the hallway rug was
removed 3 months ago when the maniac landlord decided to renovate,
and the carpet tacks are still there waiting hungrily for the unweary
toe or dangling fabric. I suppose I could rip them completely apart and redo
them smaller, but I'd have to completely reconstruct the pockets and I just feel
too lazy. Or maybe I could take in the front seams if I could preserve the curve and
then make a fake seam down the middle of the back legs and
pretend they were meant to be that way? But it still seams like an icky compromise.
And to add insult to injury the pants have that square, low-slung American crotch that is so universally admired as the standard of flattering fit. Sheesh! Mad in part because I ought to have checked that, or at least noticed before I made them... And I suppose next time I can copy a good Burda crotch too, by which time I'll have a completely new pattern. I only keep talking about the next time because I do lust after Paula's pants and feel like I deserve a good pair. Well, these ones -are- comfortable, which is something. Summer pajamas?
Big event for spinners/weavers, we schlepped down to Santa Clara for the bi-annual CNCH conference. Lots of vendors, which wasn't that great when you're unemployed :-). But a good gallery, including a special exhibit of 'neckwear' which definitely stimulated people's imagination!
I did steer a bunch of Blacksheep members to the Park Bench Patterns fashion show, which was quite good. This company suffers from the nice clothes/dull drawings syndrome, which is unfortunate from their point of view but better for us than the opposite (as in Folkwear Patterns). And then we all went to raid their booth, which was the only one that had real sewing patterns available. Have I mentioned yet that patterns specifically for weavers (or quilters for that matter) are generally abominations? Some people are so square and flat they don't need darts or fitting attempts, but you know, I don't personally know a whole lot of them, especially not women. And weaving often produces fabric too stiff for baggy flowing patterns, and quilting always does, adding vastly to the basic problem. Making something decent doesn't take that much more effort than making a potato bag, and the results are sure a lot more fun to wear!
So we got an assortment of patterns, after trying on everything we could that was there. I got the Mexican jacket, which is a nice little 40s swingback, a style I've happily worn before. But I went home and examined several of those patterns and I'm retrospectively not terribly impressed. They're meant for size 12-18, which means if you're not a size 14-16 you're out of luck. Now don't get me wrong, this is a very neglected segment of the US market, and it's great there's something specifically for that size range. But the grading instructions for other sizes are just plain wrong, way too primitive, so don't do it unless you're really experienced at patternmaking. And I'm not fundamentally opposed to loose flowing clothes, far from it, but these ones are a bit... overly square in cut. It won't keep me from trying, but only after I adjust them with my sloper.
So you don't think I was completely hypnotized by sewing, we did get some good 10/2 cotton recommended by Judith McKenzie, with an eye toward handwoven dishtowels. Can't understand why I've developed such a domestic desire, but there is it. And we finally found some bobbins for the boat shuttle, so it'll be easier to weave when we get back to it.
Finished the Ada scarf.
A couple years ago or so, Rose wanted to learn to weave and thought she'd start
by making me a scarf, and bought some
cotton chenille, mostly orange. She then
started measuring out the warp in stripes and.. ran out of steam. Everyone maintained
that chenille is really difficult to weave with, and worms horribly. BS! Rayon
chenille is a problem, but cotton is much more manageable, and imho quite soft enough.
So I got back to it, still wanting a scarf in those yummy colors,
and used what I had left, orange and yellow, to make stripes
with the Ada solution for (a+b)³ along the ends.
A repeat of single threads would have been too small and subtle,
a repeat of 4 threads took more wits than I have to keep
track of where I was in the pattern, a repeat of 2 threads looked good and was manageable
for me.
The warping was decently quick, and the stuff didn't tangle too much. The weaving was very quick. If you abstract the fact that poor Rose didn't know back then that knots are to be avoided in warp, and that there were quite a few of them, except that they didn't break if I was gentle, not like the blankie. What really took an obscene amount of time was the braiding of the fringe. I tried 3-ply braids first and they were too puny looking, didn't divide into my warp ends, and twisted besides. So I looked up how to do 4-strand braids in my handy reference, the Tassajara Bread Book :-). After a couple hours I got the hang of it, but it still took me close to 2hrs to do an end, about as long as it would have to weave an entire scarf. Sigh. I know there are gizmos to twist them, but I wonder what the result is like?
Finally finished the mourning socks. I call them that way because that's how they were
started. I had taken a great workshop on natural dyeing from Judith McKenzie, where
we boiled all kinds of small skeins of natural color handspuns in all kinds of dyes,
and got a whole bag of amazing color samples. Chartreuse from lichens, bright reds and coral
pinks from cochenille, strong yellows from osage, indigos, I loved them all and they
looked great together. Unfortunately, I usually carry my knitting in plastic bags,
unusual plastic bags like the ones from the FNAC or La Maison Du Chocolat, but plastic
bags all the same. So when I took an almost completed pair of pop-art socks (cover
of little square Vogue book) from
these samples to NY on a trip, and left the bag on the plane?
train?, it no doubt got thrown out like all other plastic bags. Sniff. It's been
2 years and I still mourn them.
But to get back to the point, I started another pair of socks with the darkest, dullest yarn I had (from Socka, great yarn, and not really that dull). And then petered out after the first one, and didn't want to be reminded of the beautiful ones left behind. I know there are many schools of thought on the topic, but I'm usually quite self-disciplined about finished pairs, so I couldn't start another, see, till I finished this one. So I recently picked them up again, when Rose finished my green socks. I am always under the impression that a pair of socks takes 3-4 months, but I just realized that's at my usual knitting rate on portable projects, ie 20mn on the bus per day or so. I knew that Priscilla tosses off a sock in a single evening, but she's a force of knitting nature, it didn't occur to me I should try to keep up. Lo and behold, if you sit down and do some sustained knitting, say watch a (non-subtitled) movie and put in a couple hours, you can make amazing progress. It's not at all unlikely I would be able to finish a pair in a couple weeks! And me, the slowest knitter in the West...
So these socks are the standard Elizabeth Zimmermann sock from "Knitting Without Tears", agremented by my standard Barbara Walker cable, this one by the way not being as dull as it looks at first glance, but is subly asymmetrical. I like a cable to keep myself from being bored to death, but one must admit that a cable in varigated yarn is strictly for the pleasure of the knitter and does not show to any but the most discerning eye. Alas in the first sock I thought I'd try something new, and started the heel pattern of slip stitches about 1/2" before I separated out the heel flap. Some theory about keeping wear down, which ignores the fact that I like my heels kind of low anyway. This fit of experimentation would probably have been harmless if I hadn't let these socks sit for a year or so, and forgotten all about it by the time I attempted the second sock. I measured my heel flap against the first one, as I always do. And then I decreased for the ankle and decreased and decreased and I still had 30 stitches too many and was almost ready to start the toes... So I finally figured it out, and much as I tried to rationalize the situation there was no way I could wear them without needing special boots to accomodate the extra 2" of foot circumference, so I ripped. Sigh. The final product is really nice though, and their neutral dullness will probably ensure regular wearings.
Wandered into an African store in the neighborhood, and found some really smashing
tie-dye fabric. Don't think you can see on the scan that it's also got a distinct
jacquard pattern, so there's one of my favorite effects: print and texture that have
nothing to do with each other. I love that effect in quilts too, it's so much more
interesting than quilting around pieced shapes. This is nice sturdy cotton,
and should last for eons too while making a very comfy summer shirt. And it goes very well,
in an African sort of way, with some cool weird Fimo buttons from
Dotty Calabrese.
Anyway I used the previous Burda pattern I'd already made in Hawaiian dancing girls, for Rose. If you remember it had a back underarm tightness problem which made it less than optimal. Having consulted the reference library and pondered the topic deeply, I both brought out the back armhole about 1/2" (1cm, body and sleeve) and added some 50s pleats to the side back under the yoke. This way I figured it'd fit better, and there'd be some slack if I screwed up. Right on both counts, she has no trouble at all reaching forward in this one. Ha ha! How satisfying to have such an all-around triumph :-). I think she's as happy with the finished product as I am, at least she wears it a whole lot.
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